PYSANKY BASICS by MAGGIE

GENEROSITY Enhances Learning – encourages instructors and students to freely share their knowledge and experience… Pysanky is kept vital by constantly expanding its definition, while preserving its traditions.

MAGGIE is of Lemko Ukrainian and Polish ancestry. As a girl of 12, I learned to make pysanky-Ukrainian Easter Eggs-from a gentleman at our local Ukrainian Center. I watched him take a raw egg and with a simple wooden Kistka or stylus, and melted bees wax, write a perfect equator line, using the sharp skill of a master "pysankarka". He also taught me how to attach a straight pin to the end of a #2 pencil eraser, to use as a stylus for applying wax patterns in the Lemko style; my love of writing pysanky began that day. I bless my Mother for having the insight to forsee that I would become the writer of this holy tradition. In those days, we were expected to keep Good Friday quiet, without television or radio. I spent every Good Friday making pysanky, keeping the day reverent, while Mother prepared traditional foods, to be blessed by the priest on Holy Saturday. When writing in the Lemko style, I especially feel a strong connection to my Lemko grandmother, Euphrosine, who came to America in 1897, at the age of 16, I never met her. Today, my aim is to freely share the knowledge and experience, keeping vital this ancient art form.

2014-2016. N.B. EGG ARTISTS USE HATCHERY OR FARM GROWN EGGS; NO EGGS ARE TAKEN FROM THE WILD. U.S. FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS THE USE OF EGGS FROM THE WILD.

A Carpathian woman is using a stylus that appears to be a straight needle to apply bees wax to an egg. Pysankas of the Ukrainian Carpathians by Solomchenko, 2002.

EARLIEST WRITING TOOLS Peasants often made a crude wooden tool with a pig-bristle fixed to the end. In earliest times, it would have been a thorn. Today pysanky writers use a copper, metal or electric" kistka". What is a kistka? A kistka or kystka is the name given to the stylus (tool) used in making pysanky in some areas of western Ukraine and in Poland. It is also referred to as a pysachok and pysaltse. It generally consists of a small metal reservoir with a fine tip/opening on a wooden or plastic handle. Wax is scooped into the reservoir, heated, and then this stylus is used to write with wax on an egg's shell.

Cultic ceramic eggs have been discovered in excavations near the village of Luka Vrublivets'ka, during excavations of a Trypillian site (5th to 3rd millennium BC). These eggs were ornamented, and in the form of торохкальці (torokhkal'tsi; rattles containing a small stone with which to scare evil spirits away).

This is the oldest Easter egg found by Lviv archaeologists to date.

500-year-old Easter egg was found during excavations in Lviv, the press service of the Rescue Archaeological Service of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has reported.According to the report, the pysanka (a Ukrainian ornate Easter egg) was found in a water collector dated to the 15th-16th centuries, on Shevska Street in the central part of the city at a depth of 5.5 meters."Previously, Kyivan Rus pysankas dated to the 12th-13th centuries were found in Zhydachiv, Lviv region, and Khrinnyky in Volyn region, but these were ceramic eggs. This one is made on an egg shell, most likely from a goose egg. And it is very well preserved, almost 90%," a junior research officer of the Rescue Archaeological Service, Ostap Lazurko, said.